Search

USA Today Announces Top 10 Beer States

Yesterday, a USA Today article listed the ten best states in American for craft beer brewing. I was pleased to see that the home of the Blind Tiger Podcast, Pennsylvania made the list at number six.

Nestled between the great states of Michigan and Wisconsin the author had this to say about the birthplace of America:

German immigrants to Pennsylvania brought with them a love of good beer, and the state already had six breweries pre-Prohibition, more than any other state in the country. Beer lovers will probably be familiar with Pennsylvania’s Golden Monkey and Hopdevil from the Victory Brewing Company, but the state has a lot more than just these heavy hitters.

Given that Victory brewing is so close to home I was pleased to see it given special attention in the article. It certainly deserves the accolades as the majority of the beer from their staples to their more experimental beers are nothing short of delicious.

The article was lacking a certain potency to the rankings. The means of judgment was based solely on the number of breweries within the state. So while California is an undeniable a solid choice for the top spot a state with amazing craft beer like Vermont didn’t even make the list at all. Clearly this sort of system for judgement is heavily biased toward more populated states with more lenient liquor laws.

Thus while it is nice to be able to say that even USA today knows that Pennsylvania is in the top 12% of states in terms of craft brewing these results need to be taken with a grain of salt. Just because a state has more breweries doesn’t mean they have better breweries.

Maybe someone will attempt to rank the top breweries in America and see which states contain the highest density of the highest breweries. That would seem like a fairer analysis for ranking state.

At least the craft beer movement has traction in major mainstream media though. Keep it up!